DOTA 2

Alright bros I need to know what to do about Invoker. I don't play ranked, just solo normal games. He seems literally impossible to deal with in these games though. He has a ~300 mana burn at like level 3, cold snap is the most aggravating ability in the game and he can just ghost walk out of trouble if you do try and gank him.

Is there something I'm missing on him? Does he just have awful stat growth that I never notice? Cause uhhh, he seems to just be better than the vast majority of int heroes. Like, is there ever a reason to pick Crystal Madein when you could just play Invoker?

You could buy a dust.

His shit is extremely front loaded, all of his spells have like 30s CD, so if you survive the combo, he can just autoattack. He also needs a truckload of experience, anything but mid lane is a waste. His HP is also usually crap, so if you have an initiator or huge ulti, you can make him at least panic if not murder him outright - Lion, SK. Specific counters are FV, Silencer and Skywrath. Silenced invoker is a dead invoker.

IDK who designed the quests, but 25 min Agh's on Jakiro among support quests ? First - why the fuck are you building Aghs, second - having 4k item 25 minutes in a 4/5 position is a luxury, if you want to win, you are better off with force staff/eul/mek and keeping up wards ... Rushing aghs is a terrible idea unless you have like faceless void.

Pound for pound, he has to be the most versatile and borderline OP hero in the game. I have a 5k friend that only plays Invoker and he just rekt's people all day. Blink, forge spirit, coldsnap, and if they get away he finishes them off with Sunstrike. It's like 15+ kills every game. You can see how crazy hard he is to deal with at an 8k pro-level when Miracle makes other pro's look bad.

Focused and repeated ganks by two or more heros with stuns, silences, and burst damage seem to be the only way to keep him in check.

Only way to deal with a good invoker, like any late game carry, is to actively punish him early game by communicating with your team and pressuring his lane/denying runes and having a core with silence/build into orchid and having dust for when he eul's out of silence.

The main issue I see is that you see poor/no rotations onto mid and he just picks up kills on rune rotations to spin out of control to where there is not enough reliable cc in the world to stop him.

I can't watch Secret anymore. This is impossible to watch.

IDK what happened, it's like watching Secret 2.0 before they went on a tear. Just randomly dying all over the place and when they win it's because of a lategame draft and stalling.

I just upgraded my mouse and keyboard from the horrible set that came with the computer. Went with a Razor Naga Hex mouse and Corsair K70 with cherry red switches. It's my first mechanical keyboard and thought that would be the easiest switches to transition too. I really like the feel of the mouse and love the six thumb buttons on it but had no idea how weird a new mouse and keyboard would feel. I'm gonna have to play quite a few bot matches before I get used to the new setup. This is even way more awkward than when I switched to quick cast on just about everything.

Right now I use the thumb buttons for select hero, select other units and hero, select only other units, ability upgrade, quick buy, and scoreboard.

I'm a firm believer that anything above 5 buttons on a mouse is a gimmick, even then I usually only use 3-4

I suggest dropping specific buttons to select hero and switching to control groups, it makes controlling any other units much easier, even the courrier. I use 1-5 and since they persist through games, every game I start I have my hero on 1-4, 5 for courrier, and 2-4 gets rebound during the game to any units I might need - familiars, dominated unit, necronomicon,...

I dont usually post in this thread as im an unranked scrub, but I have been playing for a while now, exclusively Ability Draft mostly.

Does anyone who is really good at the game even play AD? There is virtually no discussion about it. I know im in the minority but I honestly feel like AD is a lot more fun (but less balanced obviously) than AP.

Some of the combos out there are truly hilarious. I managed to get life drain and spirit siphon and built aether and hoollly fuck was it awesome. One of the funn(i)est experiences Ive had playing a game online. There are a ton of other unfair combos like totem and jinada, or totem and nyx ult, also sticky napalm and liq fire or ion. There are some very interesting matches depending on draft pool. Do people just frown upon it because its for unwashed masses or is it something deeper competitively?

I like AD, but you typically run into the problem of "one person gets OP combo or combo someone else wanted and half the people abandon the game". It isn't a serious mode. Hell, the Rick and Morty pack calls it Nonsense Mode ;p

I used to play it a good bit, but got out of it a while back for the reasons others stated. I think I have a good suggestion for some reading if you haven't seen this:

Joe Kelley Part 1

This guy did a statistical analysis of Ability draft and win percentages for skills/combos and some of them were pretty interesting, like heart stopper aura being the highest % winning skill which I would not have guessed.

Artour playing like traaaaaaaaaaaaaash.

Jungling Juggernaut
Jungling Bloodseeker (who talked the most shit when we were losing like 5-14)
Antimage who I worked hard to babysit and even gave him 2 timbersaw kills only ragequits 15 minutes in by buying blink dagger and running into enemy team over and over.

I think I need to stop playing for a while.

Zaphid_sl said:

Kids these days ...

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I had the exact same report card. Had a great day of Dota2, I wanted to just play 1 game before doing errands. I straight blew off responsibility and went 8-0. Would do again.

Hoping Origami Geckos whoops EG's ass.

Wow, EG just treated them like a tier 3 NA Dota team. Absolutely dumpstered.